Mar 2, 2011

Starting with the title's play on "Grandeur," Kay Ryan's "Blandeur" is witty while these photos are sorta postcard-sappy. Also, I don't have a Swiss Alp to offer (like her Eiger). Still, I think she and I share a perspective. I believe someone said thewhole is more than the sum of itsparts . . . .

10 comments:

What do you think of the poem? To you yearn for less? Or, as the 'free will' thinking humans we are, do want to pick and chose what we have less of? Would the Grand Canyon be as breath-taking if it were less of a canyon? Would your wheat field photo be as eyecatching if it had less wheat with less color? Wow Pamela Anderson still be 'interesting' if she had less bosom? Would 'Winter's Bone' have impressed you if it had less dreary and more happy?Let's pick and chose. Less war, less bickering, less confrontation. More magic!

Of course, Ryan is playing Oppositeville, and in the simplicity of its ideas, I think it's a surprisingly effective way to praise things as they are--which is to say, grand. Her verbal skill (look at those unusual rhymes!) and her wit prevent sentimentality.

I have had the Ryan thought in a somewhat serious way about the Rockies and the Alps. They are just an excess of "Look at me. Look at how difficult I can make life for you." They are very self-centered mountains. Braggarts. :)

All the quips we hear about Pamela Anderson, and I wouldn't know her if she walked into the room right now. Do you think I should let her in?

Gosh, I love the first two lines of the poem. And I know what the whole thing means:

It's how you feel on a lovely day, when you don't owe money, no one close to you is sick or dying, you're not crazy insane about someone, and someone isn't crazy insane about you. You're just happy with the birds and sky and health. And you want things to stay like this forever.